Clean Eating French Vinagrette dressing

This has been my favorite salad dressing since I was a little girl. A few tweaks make it clean!

Dry:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dry mustard (powdered)
Wet:
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/8 tsp agave
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
5 T wine vinegar (original recipe calls for tarragon vinegar, which apparently they don't make any more. If you can find it, USE IT! It's SOOOO good in this dressing)
1/2 cup + 2 Tbs olive oil
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 c fat-free milk

Place all the dry ingredients into a blender or food processor. After adding the lemon juice and agave, turn blender on for 30 seconds. Add vinegar and garlic, blend for another 30 seconds. Add oil, blend 30 seconds. Add egg, blend 30 seconds. Add milk, and blend for 1-2 minutes. (This helps the vinegar "cook" the egg.) It will keep indefinitely in the fridge.

Clean eating Chocolate strawberries

1/4 C coconut oil
1 Tbs. Agave sweetener
1/3 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 c cocao powder
as many clean, chilled strawberries as you think you can fit in your tummy

In a saucepan, melt the coconut oil on med heat until melted. Add agave and vanilla, whisk until well blended. TAKE PAN OFF THE HEAT. Let it cool for about 30 seconds to a minute.

Add cocao powder and whisk, then let it cool for 2 minutes. Then dip away!

Vinegar and Baking soda tackle the carpet stains

 So, today is the day I decided to tackle those creepy "mystery" stains on my homestead carpet. I heard a hot tip that baking soda and vinegar would do the job, so I decided to put these two superheroes to the test against prefab carpet cleaner. I like to call it:

Baking soda vs. Resolve
To start out, I made a rough mixture of baking soda and water and rubbed it all over the mystery stain. (I didn't use exact measurements.) Then I let the baking soda dry overnight. Then I planned on making a 2:1 vinegar to water mixture to finish the cleaning process. This is what it looked like with dried baking soda:
Resolve was a bit simpler: spray, wait 3 minutes, and scrub with towel. This is the mystery stain I treated with Resolve (it is freshly sprayed in this picture, so the carpet looks clean. It's really not)
After I put the prefab on, I finished the baking soda treated carpet by pouring the vinegar/water mixture on the dry baking soda, which, yes, is like the exploding volcano experiment that everyone does in elementary school. I kept pouring vinegar on the spot until the baking soda stopped reacting. (You may think that this would make your house smell like vinegar: surprisingly, it doesn't smell at all once it is done reacting). This is what I ended up with:
Spot GONE! Resolve (below) also did an admirable job (you can see the clean part of the spot at the bottom right of the stain), but it make the room smell funny.

So, is the Deadly Duet (baking soda & vinegar) worth the extra effort? I will rank them in these areas:

1. Time: Resolve was quicker, it took about 6 minutes max start to finish.

2. Effectiveness: Decide what you will, but Baking soda & vinegar did a better job.

3. Cost:

Bottle of Resolve: $4.00 on amazon (32 oz.)

Baking soda: $1.00 (16oz box)

Vinegar: $2.00 (24 oz bottle)

SO: baking soda and vinegar are definitely cheaper (they also multitask!)

4. Other: Smell. Baking soda definitely wins in this category.

Overall: Baking soda & vinegar kicked Resolve's butt. Definitely worth the effort. 

Microfiber Miracle!

So, this isn't really a new discovery for me, and it's not really "homestead", but I LOVE microfiber cleaning cloths! They can literally do anything and everything, and the best part is, for most of the jobs you can eliminate cleaning products! (Sounds weird, but I will explain).

These are my weapon of choice. You can buy them at Lowe's for a little less than $3, or on Amazon for even less than that.

To give you just a little taste of what they are capable of, I will clean my filthy sliding glass door with nothing more than water and 2 microfiber cloths. Here is what I am up against: 
Technique: I wet one cloth and rung it out, and left one dry. I wiped the whole window down with the wet cloth, then dried it with the dry cloth, and... voila! A masterpiece! 
Here is another shot of the masterpiece: 
I hate to admit it, but I was extremely surprised at how clean my doors were! The best parts:

1. it was quick. No buckets to fill and lug around, no juggling clean and dirty towels.
2. it was cheap. Since I already had the cloths, it was free.

3. it was healthy for me. NO chemicals, fragrances, fumes, etc.

4. it was healthy for the environment. No chemicals touch me, no chemicals touch the environment. WIN, WIN, WIN situation.

Note: they also clean mirrors with excellent results.

Other Note: I also use them to clean my counters. I am pro-germs, so I just wet them down and scrub. (I do still use Clorox on them when I need to disinfect something, like if raw chicken juice gets on the counter.) But for the most part, it cuts down on the number of chemicals you use, gives your immune system a boost (if you want to know the science, Google "Getting the Dirt on Germs", an article by USC's health magazine), and saves you money!

soap free face care

Here is a gross confession... I haven't used soap to wash my face in 2 months!! Ok, so maybe it's not as gross as it sounds. But here's the deal. I don't know who's idea it was to wash faces with soap in the first place. We are trying to clean mostly oil off our skin when we wash it. In chemistry, we learn that like dissolves like, so it would make sense that the best thing to use to dissolve facial oil is another oil, not an oil-stripping cleanser that actually stimulates skin to produce more oil. Think about it, your skin feels tight and itchy after washing, and you can't wait to get your moisturizer on it. By the end of the day, we are battling that oily-slick look, which leads us to wash our face to get the oil off. It's a vicious cycle. I have always had terrible skin, I had acne in high school which morphed into combination skin in college. (I'm talking schizophrenic combination, as in my cheeks were severely dry and flaky, the rest of my face continued to break out.)

So there's a lot more science about this, but I'll just get to the good part. I wanted to try making my own cleansing oil with equal parts of castor and olive oils, but I'm in my 3rd trimester and I'm constantly exhausted (lazy). So I just used what I had in my house, which happened to be this:

Before I get my face wet in the shower, I pour a nickel-sized amount in my hands and massage it onto my dry face for about a minute, sometimes more because it feels so good. :) When I am done massaging, I turn the shower water to hot and wet a washcloth with the hot water. I rest the washcloth on my face as long as I can, then I wipe the oil off my face. It will feel like your face is super oily the first few times you get out of the shower, but you will get used to it! 

I wish I had before and after pics to show how amazingly this works, but I honestly didn't think it would work so I didn't document my skin before. Now, it is even-toned and I rarely ever have breakouts or clogged pores, AND I don't have to use moisturizer or face wash any more! Just one step and my skin care is done! Give it a try, I dare you!

Apple Cider Vinegar.... ACV

Apple cider vinegar seems to be one of the hot new crazes of the health-DIY circle, so I thought I would look into it a little bit. According to WebMd, Apple cider vinegar is used alone or with honey for weak bones (osteoporosis),weight loss, leg cramps and pain, upset stomach, sore throats, sinus problems,high blood pressure, arthritis, to help rid the body of toxins, stimulate thinking, slow the aging process, regulate blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and fight infection. Anyone else sold yet?? I am!!!

Yesterday, I tried to drink some with water, I think my ratio was 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water, but I could barely gag it down. So today I decided I needed some way to make it more bearable. (I didn't expect myself to enjoy any beverage with vinegar as the main focus, that's asking a lot.) I did find one online that was bearable. I sort of tasted like lemonade, I guess because it had a bit of a bite but was still sweet. It uses  3 cups of water, 4 tablespoons ACV, 4 tablespoons of apple juice, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Mix them all together, and drink it with some ice. The first sip is a bit shocking, but it mellows out when you get used to it! 

birthday smirthday

Well, actually, just hubs. I made him a delicious dinner of PF Chang's lettuce wraps (recipe here). Yep, I asked him what he wanted, and this was it! I also made him an ice cream cake, which I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of!!! It was truly a masterpiece. It was Funfetti cake with Oreo ice cream. Sounds weird, but again, it was what he wanted. And it was delicious! Basically I just baked the cake in a springform pan, put it in the freezer for an hour, put a layer of fudge on it so the ice cream didn't make the cake all soppy, and then topped it with softened ice cream and refroze the whole thing. I will definitely be doing it again. Everyone was amazed that I made it, and in reality it was one of the easiest cakes I've made.

I also threw him an over-the-top party with ideas all plagerized from Pinterest.

Great ideas, except no one understood that they were supposed to make a fruit pizza out of this stuff. I should have made a video tutorial and had it playing on the table instead of a measly little label. 

I loved these so much I left them up! They are looking like permanent decor now.